


More Landmarks, Less Landmines

by chartyourowncourse



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, William Poindexter is my red angry son
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartyourowncourse/pseuds/chartyourowncourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the spring semester of 2017 over at Samwell. The once wide-eyed and carefree frogs have turned into wise, confident juniors- in theory, at least. Chowder's lost the braces, Nursey's tattoo sleeve is...still a work in progress but slowly getting there, and Dex even managed to try a slightly different haircut for a while there. Bitty's still essentially Bitty, now balancing his senior workload and thesis with his captaincy and his baking and his vlogging and his dating of a famous NHL star.</p><p>Same old, same old.</p><p>They've seen old friends go, made some new ones too, and if some of them are still trying to find their ground in their relationship with their fellow D-man after all this time, well, that's only for them to figure out.</p><p>Even if that means having to understand each other, and themselves, along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Landmarks, Less Landmines

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, okay. I've had this idea floating in my mind (and this doc sitting in my WIPs folder) way too long. I guess this is just the result of me being way too invested in the workings of these dumbos and me and my friends basically breaking havoc about it in a group chat for months.
> 
> The thing is my school schedule right now is so saturated it kind of borders on the ridiculous, so I'm under no delusions that this story will be updated even remotely consistently, but I really really want to write this until it's done, so I figured if I release it into the wild it will be easier for me to have an actual reason too keep working on it beyond just indulging myself and a couple other people. (While I'm at it, a HUGE thanks to my number one cheerleader and partner in crime Helen, who read this over and is just generally awesome, and a shout out to Tonya and Zari for being terrible, terrible enablers.)
> 
> Here goes nothing, I guess!

It’s not the first day of the semester, but it’s the first day they’re all back together at the Haus after winter break, so same difference, really. Dex walks the familiar path through the irregular patches of grass across the front lawn, idly wipes his muddy boots on the entrance mat (it’s been a rainy last couple of weeks), and the minute he opens the door is welcomed by a soft warmth that tingles on the tips of his cold ears and nose, the scent of butter and sugar, and that very specific hot pewter smell from the oven that for the past three years has been gaining a place in Dex’s mental records of what home smells like, along with his mother’s perfume or the salty breeze he gets on his face on the deck of his uncle’s old boat every summer before the sun sets into the horizon and they make their way back to shore.

 

Classes won’t start for two more weeks, and Nurse and Chowder and Dex himself usually get to campus a week in advance, just in time for the preseason, but they all decide to show up a bit earlier after Chowder’s very sudden realization that _oh my god you guys, this is Bitty’s very last semester at Samwell we need to do something about it we gotta make it the best semester of Bitty’s life_ one night while they’re talking on their group text chat during break. It takes Nursey and Dex a couple of minutes to talk Chowder down from his incessant streaming of texts enough so they can decide that even though no, they don’t have enough control over Bits’ life to secure it as the best six months he’s ever had, what they _can_ do is their best to make sure they get off to a great start. Bitty always checks in a couple of weeks in advance, and though campus usually starts coming to life around that point, it’s still calm enough that they stick to a small welcome party in the Haus Kitchen with the four of them plus Pulse, the softy Lardo gave her dibs to before she graduated and who is good enough to play center in their line on Samwell’s Men’s Hockey team.

 

Chowder beams up at Dex when he sees him cross the door with a couple six packs tucked under one arm and shopping bags full of confetti and party poppers and silly string on the other. (Bitty will probably pretend to be scandalized about them and the mess they’re gonna make but not so secretly love it once they get started and he’s on the right side of tipsy). Nurse takes a look at him from where he’s standing on a chair, pinning to the wall the “Welcome Home, Cap!!!” banner he and Chowder made earlier in the day, and raises an eyebrow when he takes in the way Dex’s red hair is soaking wet from the rain and sticking to his forehead. Dex shrugs and makes to put his shopping bags on the table.

 

The timer goes off on the kitchen counter and Chowder puffs out his chest and proudly presents a pretty decent looking apple pie, eyes practically sparkling. Then Nursey starts going on about how Dex is dripping water on the floor, to which Dex responds that he could’ve at least given him a ride to Murder Stop-&-Shop so he didn’t have to walk under the rain, asshole, to which Chowder sheepishly interjects that he needed Nursey’s more dexterous hands to help him do the lace of the pie before Nursey can refute that there’s a perfectly good umbrella sitting in the foyer and that it wasn’t even raining that hard when Dex left so how was he even supposed to know he’d come back looking like a wet rat; and it’s probably weird to say that this is the most at peace Dex has felt in weeks, soaked to the bone and having a not-quite-yet-fight with Nurse while Chowder tries to redirect the attention to Pulse getting home with Bitty any second now, guys, please, but as it is this is the Haus he’s lived in for the last six months, and these are his friends in spite of all the chirping and the fighting and the endless arguments about things as pointless as umbrellas in the foyer, and Dex is finally home again.

 

After that it's not long until they hear movement on the front door and a couple of seconds later see Bitty followed by Pulse, who is performing the amazing feat of holding all of Bits’ multiple bags and suitcases in his massive arms. Dex has had the fleeting thought on more than one occasion that his biceps are bigger than Bitty’s head.

 

“—really not necessary, Pulse, honest… Oh my gosh.”

 

Then it’s just a mess of welcome backs and Bitty stammering over his words and slices of apple pie and cheap beer and party poppers going off. They eat together for the first time in weeks and it feels like it really hasn’t been more than a couple of days since they last saw each other. Chowder talks about spending the holidays at Farmer’s (for which he gets mercilessly chirped) and Pulse tells them the story of how he and his older brother almost got gutted by a bear when they were camping and how they barely managed to escape when he threw an honest to god cooler at it before getting in the car and driving away. No one doubts the veracity of this story for a second.

 

Their party runs well into the night, and by the time the last pie platter is empty (because of course Bitty casually whipped up a couple more plus a batch of sugar cookies while they were catching up, which isn’t surprising at all, especially considering the speed at which Pulse burns through food) Chowder is fast asleep sprawled across Pulse’s lap and Nursey’s sitting on the floor with Bitty while he gets his ass handed to him in a game of canasta. Dex is leaning against the windowsill because he and Nursey aren’t allowed to play board games together since the Imperial Settlers Debacle of 2016. They all know Bitty’s just glad the green couch met its dignified end and he didn’t even have to directly partake in any of it.

 

Dex looks out the window and sees the beginning of a snowfall slowly start to cover the front lawn of the Haus, the distant sketch of Samwell’s campus late at night. He zips up his hoodie when he feels a shiver run up his spine that most likely has nothing to do with the earlier rain, because Bitty insisted he change into fresh clothes as soon as he’d seen him all soaked through. It’s this strange sense of finality, Dex absently thinks. It’s stupid, he supposes, but if he had to compare it with a concrete feeling it would be that moment in a movie when the music lowers down to an almost whisper, a quiet pulse that’s more a warning to the viewer that things are finally gonna unfold. It’s not Dex’s last semester, but he starts feeling the heavy weight of premature nostalgia settling inside his chest, and suddenly everything starts feeling just a bit too small, from his worn out red hoodie to the very room he’s standing in. It’s the same feeling he got the last time he played with the local youth hockey league before he was too old, knowing he wouldn’t be coming back next year.

 

He looks at his friends lounging in the living room, all careless limbs and smug grins, and feels a pang of bitterness that he’s unable to place. Bitty looks up from his game and throws a reassuring smile his way, like he just knows what Dex is thinking.

 

Dex gives back a small grin. For all he knows, Bits might as well know. He’s the one graduating in the fall, after all.

 

Just then Pulse decides to draw in a monumental snore, violently waking Chowder up and sending him rolling down to the floor with a startled gasp that sounds all too much like _Shark week!_ , and that’s when Bitty sends them all off to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Dex is ready to die. Honest.

 

As it turns out, it’s not that great of an idea to walk to the shop under heavy rain, especially when it’s mid-January and the ground hasn’t even quite thawed out yet.

 

It had all started with a regular cold, which is always annoying and never fails to flare up warning bells for Dex, considering his record. And then it'd dragged on for weeks, getting progressively worse until one day he finally woke up in the middle of the night, and at first it hadn't been clear what exactly had woken him, his eyes trying to make out the silhouette of the objects in his room as he reached for his alarm clock. It wasn't until it informed him it was four am in the morning and he'd tried to heave a sigh that he realized he couldn't breathe. He'd barely managed to pull out the inhaler he'd brought with him to Samwell from a discarded box at the bottom of his closet before he passed out from a lack of oxygen.

 

He hadn't used an inhaler once in almost 5 years.

 

Dex should've definitely known better, should've considered the rain, should've at least grabbed an umbrella, but it was such a light drizzle when he'd left the Haus and his asthma hasn't acted out in _years, what in the literal hell_. Someone somewhere is probably getting a kick out of Dex's misfortune, he's convinced. But all it had taken was Chowder looking at him with impossibly big eyes saying “Bitty will be here so soon, Dex” and then Dex was on his way to the store armed solely with a light jacket and his will to get drunk that night. And to be fair, Bitty'd gone to far greater lengths to make sure they were all happy and cared for. The least Dex could do was walk to the store to get some booze for his welcome party, a perfectly fair trade, or so he'd thought at the time.

 

Now his entire body's somehow simultaneously too cold and too hot, his face is so stuffed that trying to pull in a breath is sometimes nothing more than a valiant effort, and he's coughing so hard he's actively fighting the need to puke. And he's going to miss the first game of the season.

 

He's trying not to cough up a lung into a paper tissue when he feels a hand settle on his back and start rubbing in reassuring circles.

 

“Easy.”

 

And Dex, God help him, he manages to roll his eyes at Derek Nurse even when he's coughing so hard he can practically feel his chest caving in on itself.

 

He sags back into his pillows when the fit recedes and throws a solid attempt at a glare at Nursey, who's looking at him the same way he sometimes looks at books when they're studying for finals, a perfectly composed mask of calmness that's not entirely convincing when he's looking at you from behind three piles of books and assignments and empty coffee paper cups.

 

“What're you doing here?” Dex wheezes out, and winces at how thin his voice sounds to his own ears.

 

“I live here too, genius. As a matter of fact, well Imma try to break it gently to you, but this happens to be my room as well.”

 

Dex slaps Nursey's hand away, the one he'd been rubbing against his back and then moved to rest on his shoulder.

 

“As if I could ever forget,” and he tries to go for irritated, but his voice is a shaky mess, so he just ends up sounding breathless, which honestly is less than ideal, and if he weren't under the effects of a 102º fever he'd probably manage to feel his ears burning up, but it's all par for the course at this point. Nursey raises a wry eyebrow at him. “Oh, shut the fuck up, you know what I mean, Nurse. Why aren't you down at Faber, christ, you're gonna get sanctioned into next season, did you even talk to Hall and Murray?”

 

Dex's chest is starting to heave again, so Nursey places a placating hand over it, and Dex doesn't even have the energy to get annoyed anymore, just manages a quiet “ _I dare you to tell me to chill right now.”_

 

“I talked to Bitty a couple of days ago,” Nursey says with a shrug. “He cleared it with the coaches. It's chill, bro.”

 

Dex's laptop has been idly broadcasting the game back at Faber on the school’s online station all the while, and they both startle when it narrates a risky last second save Chowder manages to secure their victory with. They've just won their opening game.

 

It feels strangely underwhelming. Like maybe they should be hugging or laughing or fistbumping at the very least, acknowledging in some way the fact that their teammates out there just got their season off to a great start. Instead they just look at each other for a couple of long silent seconds.

 

“What are you even doing here, Nursey?”

 

Dex and Nursey...they're roommates and D-partners and they share a very oddly specific taste for mixing all the soda flavors from the machine in the dining hall (Nursey’s the only one who gets that it _does_ taste like gummy sour worms, somehow) and they mostly communicate by making pointed jabs at each other, more out of custom than anything else. The closest Dex has been to having a best friend is probably his older brother whom he has barely talked to since he got deployed two years ago, and really he spends more time with Chowder outside of the rink and the Haus, and he feels more comfortable talking to Bitty when it comes to having someone lend an ear, but Nursey is his constant, he's the one who punched that left wing in the face after he checked Dex into a broken nose in their championship game last year, the one to sit in silence with him in their room when they have work to do and don't wish to partake in the riots that are the team study sessions at Founders, he's the one who held him through heaving gasps and stayed up all night with him when he had his attack to make sure he'd be alright.

 

It's nothing but expected consequence, Dex guesses, the ebb and the flow and the result of three years of sharing the same space with a person. You simply can't go through the stuff they've gone through together and remain unfriendly. And yeah, they still fight sometimes... okay, quite often; and Nursey is still completely undecipherable to Dex on a good day and utterly insufferable the rest of the time, but most importantly, despite all odds and predictions, he guesses he can safely say they are _friends_.

 

Nursey shrugs again, cocks his head to the side to inspect the multitude of meds crowding the top of Dex's bedside table and pointedly avoids looking at him.

 

“I would've given you a ride,” he finally says, taking a box of cough suppressants and examining the label. “I mean. I _should've._ I just didn't think– didn't know...This thing with your asthma sucks, man. I'm sorry.”

 

“Are you shitting me right now?”

 

“What?”

 

“Is that really what this is about? Did you really just miss your first game of the season because of what? Misplaced guilt? Jesus, you're an idiot Nurse,” Dex tells him, and Nursey's looking at him like he just got socked in the face, but Dex is snorting and okay, fuck, bad call, that burns. “Ow, ow, okay, I'm not laughing at you, but that was such a dumbass call, I can't believe you.”

 

And Nursey's arguing back but he's smiling too when he retorts:

 

“You were purple, Poindexter! Your face. It was purple. And faces? Yeah, they're not supposed to do that, especially when your hair is the color of carrot juice and—”

 

“—carrot juice, dude, really? Is that the best you can manage–?”

 

“—know you're fragile right now, but that is _so not_ a look, bro c’mon, Halloween was two months ago—“

 

“—really gotta up your chirping game, Nursey, jeez—“

 

“It's called being gentle Will, perhaps you've heard of the concept?”

 

“Ah, fuck off Nurse. You wouldn't know gentleness if it punched you in the face.”

 

“That's..." And Nursey's making a face that's two parts exasperation and one part definitely choking back laughter. “Are you familiar with the word conundrum?”

 

Dex pushes him out of the bed with a well placed kick and a pull of the covers and Nursey stumbles on his own feet, ends up falling ass first onto the floor. How he manages to make such a production of it Dex wouldn't completely believe if he hadn't known the boy for the past three years.

 

And with that Dex is laughing so hard his lungs protest angrily at him, and suddenly he's coughing again, a wet raspy thing that has him doubled over with the force of it, face heating up, eyes watering furiously, and God, _it hurts._ A searing pain that bursts from the center of his sternum in what feels like rivulets of burning, ice cold water.This coughing fit drags on longer than his previous ones and Dex can feel the muscles in his chest contracting until he's no longer able to breathe, the loud bangs of his coughs quickly replaced by the high pitched wheezes in the ragged gasps he can barely manage to pull in. Vaguely he registers the weight of Nursey's hand on his shoulder as he places his rescue inhaler against his lips, but he's unable to make out the words he's saying, feels like the room is underwater and everything is slow and distant and heavy, his head swimming with it, but has enough presence of mind to squeeze the inhaler to deliver a dose.

 

With that his breathing slowly returns to normal and Dex slumps back again into the bed. He blinks hard once, twice, to clear out his blurry vision and brings up a shaky hand to wipe at his face, tries to push down the wave of nausea that came from his esophagus violently and repeatedly spasming and contracting and tries to _breathe_.

 

When he opens up his eyes again Nursey is staring intently at him, a dark, heavy thing lurking in the corners of his eyes, the set of his eyebrows, and Dex is abruptly reminded of the exact moment, minute eighteen of the third period of their last game of the past year, in between his nose cracking painfully against the ice and Bitty scoring their winning goal, that Nursey had thrown his helmet away and himself against Harvard's left winger, the noise they'd made as they collapsed into the frozen ground, Nursey pinning the player below his body and delivering a clean blow to his face.

 

Then Dex looks again and finds Nursey's soft green eyes looking at him with concern.

 

“Hey,” he tries, but it comes out as a croak. He makes a face.

  
“Don't talk, Poindexter. I'll go get you a glass of water, yeah?”

 

Dex nods softly and watches Nursey leave the room. The golden four pm light is filtering lazily through the blinds in the room and Dex suddenly feels the weight of exhaustion sink him into the bed. He blinks heavily a couple of times, feels the ghost of a gentle hand settle on his shoulders _did Nursey make it back yet? Why is the room so dark?_ And is only half aware of the rumble of what feels like muffled music and voices downstairs before he lets himself fall into the soft lull of the night.

 

He wakes up the next morning (noon? he checks the time on his phone and catches himself before sighing at the fact that it's a quarter past twelve) to the sound of Nursey's loud snoring on the bunk bed above his, the smell (he can smell!) of pancakes coming from downstairs and a glass of water plus a plate of sugar cookies on his bedside table.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Richard Siken's piece Black Telephone, that reminds me way too much of Dex and Nursey:
> 
> "Here is what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper. 
> 
> I didn’t want to write these pages until there were no hard feelings, no sharp ones. I do not have that luxury. I am sad and angry and I want everyone to be alive again. I want more landmarks, less landmines. I want to be grateful but I’m having a hard time with it."
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://coffeeatannies.tumblr.com).


End file.
